"This paper examines the journalistic discourse on the Instagram project @ichbinsophiescholl, initiated by Südwestrundfunk (SWR) and Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR). The project is based on a fictional premise in which the resistance fighter Sophie Scholl uses the social media platform Instagram during t
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he last few months before her arrest and murder in 1943. This thought experiment and its implementation in 2021 attracted a great deal of media attention and, at its peak, more than 900,000 mostly young people were following Sophie Scholl, played by Luna Wedler, on Instagram. The PR departments of SWR and BR communicated the number of followers and the extensive reporting as a major success and vindication of their approach to reaching young people. This analysis reconstructs discursive patterns, discourse strands, and discourse positions in the reporting on the project between May 1, 2021 and July 20, 2022. Based on the findings, we discuss the extent to which »the« journalism has fulfilled its public role and the various functions assigned to it." (Abstract)
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"Spiele sind durch Produktion, Distribution und Konsumption in politische Strukturen eingebunden. Sie spiegeln nicht nur ihre Umwelt wider, sondern werden auch maßgeblich durch diese geformt. Die Beiträger*innen fragen transdisziplinär nach der Analyse solcher "Politiken des Spiels": Innerhalb we
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lcher rechtlichen, gesellschaftlichen und politischen Regeln findet das Spiel statt? In welchen Machtverhältnissen stehen die am Spiel beteiligten Akteur*innen? Und wie geht die Branche mit aktuellen politischen Diskursen um? Dabei betrachten sie zahlreiche Formen des Spiel(en)s in diachroner sowie synchroner Perspektive und machen deutlich: Spielen ist ein hochpolitischer Akt." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"As the dominant narrative forms in the age of media convergence, films and games call for a transmedial perspective in narratology. Games allow a participatory reception of the story, bringing the transgression of the ontological boundary between the narrated world and the world of the recipient in
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to focus. These diverse transgressions - medial and ontological - are the subject of this transdisciplinary compendium, which covers the subject in an interdisciplinary way from various perspectives: game studies and media studies, but also sociology and psychology, to take into account the great influence of storytelling on social discourses and human behavior." (Publisher description)
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"Kolonialismus ist Teil vieler europäischer Familiengeschichten: Bis heute bewahren Familien Tagebücher, Militaria oder Beutestücke auf, die VorfahrInnen als koloniale AkteurInnen nach Hause gebracht haben. Sie bezeugen nicht nur familiäre Verstrickungen, sondern haben obendrein über Jahrzehnte
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hinweg kollektive Vorstellungen über die koloniale Vergangenheit geprägt. Fotografien waren daran - als vermeintlich authentische Zeugnisse - ganz wesentlich beteiligt. Über den Tod der "Erlebnisgenerationen" hinaus vermittelten sie koloniale "Erfolgsgeschichten", wodurch Familien zu einem Hort kolonialer Geschichtsmythen, etwa der "anständigen" KolonialherrInnen, wurden. Dieses Buch nimmt die kolonialen Bildbestände von Familien in der italienischen Provinz Bozen / Bolzano in den Blick, deren (Groß-)Vätergeneration am faschistischen Kolonialkrieg gegen das Kaiserreich Abessinien (1935-1941) teilgenommen hatte. Markus Wurzer untersucht die "sozialen Leben" kolonialer Bilder, also wie und wozu diese durch Soldaten und ihre Familien (re-)produziert, gebraucht und über Generationen hinweg weitergegeben wurden." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"The COVID-19 pandemic began in 2019, spread to the rest of the world in 2020 and still holds nations in its grip in 2021. There is scant research on the way it has affected Holocaust awareness. Based on scholarly work on Holocaust awareness in Israel, the top-down memory of the Holocaust in the med
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ia and the vernacular Holocaust memory on social media, this article analyzes the ways the Holocaust became a frame of reference in Israel for the interpretation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the newest link in a long chain of using the Holocaust as a prism for other topics in Israeli society. The article centers on the evolution of the COVID-19 – Holocaust references and the role of media and social media in it. It shows that the initial panic created a wave of comparisons between the Holocaust and the pandemic in the media and social media. In the second half of the year, as the restrictions and two more lockdowns became part of life, references to the Holocaust changed – negative reactions to COVID-19 government regulations and law enforcement were compared on social media to Nazi acts. The Israeli media did not create these comparisons but reported them widely and contributed to their circulation." (Abstract)
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"This book discusses the role of television drama series on a global scale, analyzing these dramas across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Contributors consider the role of television dramas as economically valuable cultural products and with their depictions of gender roles, sexua
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lities, race, cultural values, political systems, and religious beliefs as they analyze how these programs allow us to indulge our innate desire to share human narratives in a way that binds us together and encourages audiences to persevere as a community on a global scale. Contributors also go on to explore the role of television dramas as a medium that indulges fantasies and escapism and reckons with reality as it allows audiences to experience emotions of happiness, sorrow, fear, and outrage in both realistic and fantastical scenarios." (Publisher description)
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"The exhibition focuses on how young people envision their identities in their respective countries: what mental images do they collectively have about their life experiences. Thus, this project seeks to present collective memories from different parts of the world in an exhibition that will promote
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visual culture. It explores the way in which parts of the world presents themselves within a contemporary space. This exhibition therefore aims at giving the younger generation an edge in the visualization and narration of their understanding of the past through various means of artistic expressions. The expectation is that, these students’ works, created and exhibited from a wide and divergent cultural experience would provide some sort of emotional templates and indicators for the understanding of other cultures." (Introduction, page 5)
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"Este trabajo tiene como objetivo central el análisis de dos proyectos transmedia latinoamericanos en el marco de la no ficción, circunscritos desde el método del estudio de casos y la aplicación de elementos de la teoría del actor-red, donde las relaciones, la conformación de grupos sociales
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que experimentaron realidades, llegan a gestar el valor de agenciamiento, como un enfoque que expande y contribuye a la comprensión y sostenibilidad de la historia y la experiencia en el tiempo del proyecto transmedia. El nivel de impacto en la audiencia de estos dos sistemas narrativos [Proyecto Quipu, Peru; Proyecto 4Ríos, Colombia] permitió apuntalar sus realidades desde la articulación de acciones de lucha social dentro y fuera de la red, ubicando sus temáticas en agendas políticas y periodísticas locales e internacionales. Impactos que se retoman a la luz de las características de los formatos de la transmedia de no ficción y sus potencialidades cocreativas, con el fin de dinamizar las relaciones sociales y activar la comunicación participativa dentro del ecosistema digital." (Resumen)
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"History textbooks are the only history books that the majority of people read in their lives. This article investigates the impact of history textbooks on young Chinese people’s understanding of their nation’s modern history, as revealed on the popular microblogging site SinaWeibo.We analysed p
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osts related to history textbooks and their representations of three contentious turning points in the communist historical narrative: the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the nationalist assault on the communists in 1927 and the Yan’an Rectification Movement of 1942. Widespread engagement with and recollection of history textbook content indicates a substantial impact of these textbooks on people’s understanding of the past and a willingness to relate that past to the present. Responses to textbooks vary widely, from acceptance of the textbook narrative and the expression of strong patriotic and emotional connections to the past as presented in textbooks to open and angry critique." (Abstract)
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"A través de historias que nos conmueven y nos tocan emocionalmente, Romper el Silencio tiene como objetivo enseñarnos a escuchar a otras personas con apertura y empatía, aunque piensen distinto; a reconocer sus argumentos aunque no sean los nuestros; a respetar sus ideas sin señalamientos y al
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final, a entendernos y asumir maneras no violentas de tramitar nuestras diferencias personales y sociales, para construir formas de convivencia y contribuir a la no repetición del conflicto armado en Colombia. Utilizando los formatos más populares del entretenimiento, Romper el Silencio facilita a las y los jóvenes, a sus familias, a los docentes y al público en general, armar conversaciones y reflexionar sobre temas complejos, en especial, donde es más difícil: el conflicto armado, lo que pasoì y por queì pasoì, los responsables, la justicia restaurativa y la importancia de la reparación de las víctimas." (Página 2)
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"This book is about postcolonial memory in the Netherlands. This term refers to conflicts in contemporary society about how the colonial past should be remembered. The question is often: who has the right or ability to tell their stories and who do not? In other words: who has a voice, and who is si
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lenced? As such, these conflicts represent a wider tendency in cultural theory and activism to use voice as a metaphor for empowerment and silence as voice’s negative counterpart, signifying powerlessness. And yet, there are voices that do not liberate us from, but rather subject us to power. Meanwhile, silence can be powerful: it can protect, disrupt and reconfigure. Throughout this book, it will become clear how voice and silence function not as each other’s opposites, but as each other’s continuation, and that postcolonial memory is articulated through the interplay of meaningful voices and meaningful silences." (Publisher description)
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"The call to decolonize African Studies has a profound influence on the field, with varying degrees of success. This article addresses this topic in relation to the author’s personal experiences in the publishing industry in Namibia. By describing the attempt to publish a historical book about Nam
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ibian beer with a well-known German–Namibian publishing house, the lingering power of German–Namibian settler colonialism becomes clear. This article renders visible the power structures within the Namibian book market that perpetuates a whitewashed version of Namibian history and argues that decolonizing knowledge cannot succeed without paying attention to the (private) publishing industry." (Abstract)
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"Der Umgang mit der Kolonialgeschichte, die hierzulande lange im Schatten der Aufarbeitung des Nationalsozialismus und des Holocaust stand, unterliegt gegenwärtig einem grundlegenden Wandel. Zwar zählt auch Deutschland faktisch zu den postkolonialen Gesellschaften Europas, doch ist diese Tatsache
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kaum in das Bewusstsein der Menschen und in das Handeln der Politik vorgedrungen. Der Sammelband zieht Bilanz und will zugleich die notwendige Auseinandersetzung um eine Dekolonisierung globaler wie lokaler Machtverhältnisse und eine Dekolonialisierung der immer noch dominierenden Wissens- und Deutungsmacht des »Westens« anregen. Die aktuellen Debatten um den Völkermord an den Herero und Nama oder die koloniale Beutekunst im geplanten Humboldt Forum in Berlin richten den Fokus ein ums andere Mal auf eine koloniale Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"During recent decades, the question of how societies deal with the past has received increasing attention from political actors, civil society and academia. Yet, dealing with the past continues to be a very controversial issue that causes polemic debates. This book contributes to a cross-regional a
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nalysis of how societies in Latin America, South Africa and Germany deal with a past containing massive human rights violations." (Publisher description)
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"In this article, addressing the absences of cultural memory from existing institutional archives is accounted for in the development of new curatorial display territories, both online and in the gallery. The imperatives to claim new digital territories as extensions of homeland territories are cont
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extualized within the discussion of the curated works in the first in a series of exhibitions titled 'Samoan Hxstories, Screens and Intimacies' supported from Tkaronto/Toronto by imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival for the Indigenous world and for all Samoan diasporas. The co-design of new Indigenous language terms including siapo viliata are also discussed." (Abstract)
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"Social media platforms hold vast amounts of biographical data about our lives. They repackage our past content as ‘memories’ and deliver them back to us. But how does that change the way we remember? Drawing on original qualitative research as well as industry documents and reports, this book c
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ritically explores the process behind this new form of memory making. In asking how social media are beginning to change the way we remember, it will be essential reading for scholars and students who are interested in understanding the algorithmically defined spaces of our lives." (Publisher description)
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